A recent investigation by The Mail found that 6 out of 10 restaurants in Britain including McDonald’s, Burger King, and KFC, serve ice that is riddled with more bacteria than their toilets. Further, 4 samples were so contaminated that they posed a ‘hygiene risk’. Most of us avoid fast food restaurants due to the health-devastating, nutritionally dead food, but who would have guessed that even the ice is questionable (outside of the tap water contaminants)?

For the investigation, samples of ice and toilet water were gathered from branches of ten chains in Basingstoke, Hampshire and transported to a testing facility known as Microtech Services Wessex. The samples from McDonald’s, KFC, and Nando’s were found to be contaminated primarily due to ‘environmental issues’ like a dirty ice machine. Burger King, on the other hand, was said to be caused by human contamination like dirty hands.

Wagamama – Ice bacteria at both temperatures less than 10 organisms. Toilet water had 160 organisms at 37C.

“This is a warning,’ Dr. Melody Greenwood, a former laboratory director for the Health Protection Agency, said.“It is easy to forget ice can carry bacteria because they think it is too cold for germs, but that is far from the truth. Nasty bugs such as E.coli can lurk in ice machines. In some cases, such as [the restaurant] Nando’s, we found double the amount of bacteria we would expect to find [in drinking water]. This is caused by things such as a failure to clean machines and scoops used by staff.”

More than two months after an aging pipeline cracked open, spilling more than 100,000 gallons of heavy crude oil into a Mayflower neighborhood and a cove of Lake Conway, Exxon Mobil still has not provided federal regulators with even a preliminary cause for the break and has not requested approval to resume transporting oil through that pipeline.

Exxon Mobil has neither updated its April 26 accident report filed with the federal agency nor asked to reopen the pipeline, which spilled an estimated 147,000 gallons of oil March 29, leading to the evacuations of 22 homes, dead and injured wildlife, several lawsuits, and federal and state investigations.

Meanwhile, Exxon Mobil has released this set of photos of the cleanup of a Lake Conway cove that was devastated by the Pegasus tar sands spill, calling them “before” and “after” photos. But the photos don’t actually show “before” when the area was an oil-free wetland wildlife habitat, and the “after” doesn’t show a restored wetland.

“These photos aren’t before and after – they’re mid-disaster and mid-cleanup,” says National Wildlife Federation South Central Representative Geralyn Hoey. “What does Exxon plan to do for wetland restoration? Are they going to try to recreate what was a thriving habitat for waterfowl, beavers, and other wildlife?”

Exxon’s celebratory news release doesn’t say. Exxon has released few details about exactly how it conducted the cleanup. Reporters were told to stop taking photos of the spill and also not to go anywhere near the site by an Exxon contractor (they moved to another location and kept taking photos). Especially since this was heavy, toxic tar sands oil, it’s impossible to say for sure if the oil is gone without taking samples several feet below the surface.

“These photos are a horrible reminder of what the people and wildlife in Mayflower have gone through and the high price to America of serving as the middleman as oil companies pipe Canadian tar sands to the international market,” says National Wildlife Federation South Central Representative Geralyn Hoey. It’s not just Arkansas – spills of toxic tar sands have fouled communities, waterways and wildlife habitat from Michigan to Missouri. A National Wildlife Federation-led coalition has asked two federal agencies to set stronger safety standards for tar sands pipelines.

But just last week, officials with British Columbia’s government told national authorities that the province wants nothing to do with the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline that would bring tar sands west for export. Officials said the tar sands industry has failed to answer questions about the impact of spills on clean water and the communities and wildlife that depend on them.

“If Canada doesn’t want to accept the risk of transporting Canadian tar sands, why in the world is Arkansas suffering for it?” asks Geralyn.

Should you like to call or contact Kraft Foods via the internet and inquire about this, then listed in the picture above is the UPC code on the box of Kraft Mac & Cheese sent with the warning label along with their phone number and web link!

5/31/2013 Update: In the video above filmed on 5/31/2013, Flo, who is a Food Babe reader, visited Tesco Extra in Ponders End, Enfield, North London to demonstrate there are boxes of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese that are imported into the United Kingdom from the United States that require these special warning labels to alert consumers of potentially harmful ingredients that Kraft is using in their products. This video further verifies that Kraft’s flagship product “Macaroni & Cheese” sold in the UK requires a warning label stating the product may cause an adverse effect in activity and attention in children and is made with GMO wheat. (Note: GMO wheat is illegal in the US.)

It was just announced that Kraft’s CEO Tony Vernon made 49% more this year than he did last year. This fact kicked me right in the face. These are millions of dollars that could be used to stop the production of artificial food dyes. These are millions of dollars that could be used to improve Kraft’s product line for the safety of Americans. These are millions of dollars that could send a statement to us that Kraft really does care about the safety of their consumers (like they’ve said in their canned written statement already).

While Kraft has reformulated their Mac & Cheese for other countries using safer ingredients and natural dyes – they continue to exploit and feed Americans dyes made with petroleum linked to a myriad of diseases and GMOs.

But wait – you must be thinking – what?! There are GMOs in Mac & Cheese? And it’s not just any old GMO.

Kraft Mac & Cheese is made with Genetically Modified Wheat.

Below is a picture of the warning label that is placed on a box of Macaroni and Cheese (the same one we buy here) imported into the UK from the United States. The UK and other European countries require a warning label if a product contains artificial food dyes and/or GMOs. This label has a warning for both! Someone sent this in after a picture of it was posted on Kraft’s facebook page (Thank you Flo!!!). This box of Mac & Cheese is available and sold in a special imported “international food” section in a grocery store called Tesco. The box clearly states that it is from the US – specifically “Northfield, Illinois.”

On the label of Kraft Mac & Cheese there are 2 different warnings:

Warning #1: This Product May Cause Adverse Effects On Activity And Attention In Children (This warning label is required because The US version of Kraft Mac & Cheese has artificial food dyes yellow #5 and yellow #6 which are proven to be linked to hyperactivity in children.)

Please note: It is uncertain at this time who places these warning labels on products once they are imported into the UK and this is something that is still being investigated. I know it is not the grocery store themselves and not Kraft, but likely the importer/distribution company.

2 New Pictures Above added on May 31, 2013

If Kraft is using genetically modified (GMO) wheat in their Mac & Cheese, it is SERIOUSLY ALARMING for a number of reasons:

GMO Wheat is not approved by the USDA for U.S. Farming. So where the heck is Kraft getting this wheat to put in their Mac & Cheese?

The USDA is investigating the illegal crop in Oregon – Don’t you think they should investigate companies that are using GM wheat like Kraft too?

If Kraft is not using GMO wheat grown in the United States, they could be getting genetically engineered wheat from other countries that allow the production, and are importing it into the US. It is crazy to think that a company could be importing a crop that is not approved for use in the US and putting it in U.K. products without labeling!

There is only one other likely scenario for the GMO Declaration on Kraft’s Mac & Cheese. The farm land that wheat is grown on in the US is so contaminated from GMO crops like corn and soy, they have no choice but to declare wheat genetically modified on the warning label when exported to other countries. This fact is very concerning if true and has dire implications for the entire farmland here in America.

The labeler could have mistaken GMO corn for GMO wheat, but if that is the case, Kraft needs to confirm this either way and RIGHT AWAY!

If Kraft is using illegal GMO wheat in Mac & Cheese – are they using it in the rest of their products too? This alone is reason enough to BOYCOTT this company – As if we didn’t have enough reasons before!

How To Vote With Your Dollars And Hit Kraft’s Bottom Line:

Kraft is a food giant which used to be even larger before they split with Mondelez late last fall. Here is a list of major brands that Kraft produces now that you need to know to avoid. I’ve included some alternatives to check out instead…

Please take the time to share this crucial information with your family and friends. We must keep the social media pressure on Kraft – they need to know that we are not going away or letting them off the hook for this madness!

First a bit of background. Every Cabinet-level department and independent agency in the federal government has an OIG—a kind of in-house watchdog. While some OIGs have been convincingly accused of being toothless, the USDA’s internal watchdog has long been pretty blunt and straightforward. I’m still reeling over its 2010 report on the USDA’s porous system for halting the “contamination of meat with residual veterinary drugs, pesticides, and heavy metals.” Then there was this 2012 report about the rather cracked, so to speak, efforts to keep eggs safe.

The new pork report paints a Keystone Kops portrait of hog slaughter inspection, catching plants being cited for the same “egregious” (the OIG’s word) food safety and animal welfare violations over and over again, with little fear of reprisal or incentive to improve. “Enforcement policies do not deter swine slaughter plants from becoming repeat violators of food safety regulations,” the OIG concluded—including “violations as egregious as fecal matter on previously cleaned carcasses.”

If that sounds like just an “ooh, gross” concern, it’s not. Pigs raised on concentrated-animal feeding operations (CAFOs) expel feces loaded with antibiotic residues, antibiotic-resistant microbes, and heavy metals. (Their waste has also been spawning mysterious—and occasionally explosive—foam in the cesspits under the Midwest‘s teeming hog CAFOs.) This is not stuff you want to pick up at the supermarket along with your pork chop—and the USDA is the federal agency that’s supposed to help us avoid it.

All in all, according to the OIG, the USDA’s hog inspection service issued 44,128 noncompliance citations to 616 plants facilities between 2008 and 2011—and only 28 of the plants ever got suspended. And not a single one of them ever got the equivalent of the death penalty—withdrawal of USDA inspection, which would mean that meat from the offending plant couldn’t be legally sold. And often the citations were for the same offense, over and over again.

The report lays out some specific cases. At one Illinois plant that slaughters about 19,500 hogs per day, for example, the OIG found that USDA inspectors had issued 532 citations between 2008 and 2011—of which 139 were for repeat violations. Of those, 26 were for “fecal matter and running abscesses on carcasses,” and 43 involved “exposed or possibly adulterated products and the presence of pests on the kill floor.” The result of these serial lapses? No suspension or other punishments.

Corporate politics is business as usual inside the United States, as I am once again shocked to report the EPAhas sided with industry lobbyists over public health in approving a highly dangerous pesticide that the European Union recently decided to ban over fears of environmental devastation. Not only have neonicotinoidpesticides been linked repeatedly to mass bee deaths, also known as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), but the continued use of such pesticides threatens other aspects of nature (and humans) as well.

What’s even more amazing is that the decision not only comes after the EU publicly discussed the major dangers surrounding the use of the pesticides, but after the USDA released a report surrounding the continued honeybee deaths and the related effects — a report in which they detailed pesticides to be a contributing factor. Just the impact on the honeybees alone, and we now know that these pesticides are killing aquatic life and subsequently the birds that feed upon them, amounts to a potential $200 billion in global damages per year. We’re talking about the devastation of over 100 crops, from apples to avocados and plums.

And there’s countless scientists and a large number of environmental science groups speaking out on this. The EPA has no lack of information the subject. And sure, there are other contributing factors to bee deaths, there’s no question about that. We have an environment right now being hit with Monsanto’s Roundup even in residential areas, we have chemical rain, we have insane amounts of EMF — but it’s pretty clear that neonicotinoid pesticides are at least a major contributing factor. And beyond that, they have no place in the food supply to begin with.

“The EU vote comes after significant findings by the European Food Safety Agency that these pesticides pose an unacceptable risk to bees and their use should be restricted. Along with habitat loss and pathogens, a growing body of science points to neonicotinoid pesticides as a key factor in drastically declining bee populations.”

So why are they approving this pesticide to now pollute the United States in what potentially amounts to an even larger capacity than the EU? A move that will ultimately escalate the price of food worldwide due to the likely nature of continued bee deaths and subsequent crop impact? That’s the power of phony corporate science.

An underground landfill fire near tons of nuclear waste raises serious health and safety concerns – so why isn’t the government doing more to help?

here’s a fire burning in Bridgeton, Missouri. It’s invisible to area residents, buried deep beneath the ground in a North St. Louis County landfill. But the smoldering waste is an unavoidable presence in town, giving off a putrid odor that clouds the air miles away – an overwhelming stench described by one area woman as “rotten eggs mixed with skunk and fertilizer.” Residents report smelling it at K-12 school buses, a TGI Fridays and even the operating room of a local hospital. “It smells like dead bodies,” observes another local.

On a Saturday morning in March, one mile south of the landfill, several Bridgeton residents have gathered at a small home in a blue-collar subdivision called Spanish Village. Concerned citizens Karen Nickel and Dawn Chapman are here to answer questions posed by four of their neighbors. “How will I ever sell my house?” “Am I going to end up with cancer 20 years down the road?” “Is there even a solution?”

In February, the landfill’s owner, Republic Services, sent glossy fliers to residents within stink radius claiming the noxious odor posed no safety risk. But official reports say otherwise. Temperature probes reveal the fire has already surpassed normal heat levels. Reports from the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS) indicate dangerously high levels of benzene and hydrogen sulfide in the air. In March, Missouri’s Department of Natural Resources (MDNR) – which has jurisdiction over Bridgeton Landfill – quietly posted an Internet notice cautioning citizens with chronic respiratory diseases to limit time outdoors. A month after Republic distributed its potentially misleading flier, the state attorney general sued the company on eight counts of environmental violations, including pollution and public nuisance. And this week, as part of a settlement set to be announced Tuesday, Republic sent another round of fliers offering to move local families to hotels during a period of increased odor related to remediation efforts.

Nickel and Chapman are stay-at-home moms; Chapman has three special-needs kids. Neither of them wants to spend her time worrying about a damn landfill fire. But until someone higher up the power chain intervenes, they have sworn to call municipal offices, file Sunshine requests and post notices to the community’s Facebook group, no matter how unsettling the facts they uncover. Scariest of all: The Bridgeton landfill fire is burning close to at least 8,700 tons of nuclear weapons wastes. “To have somebody call you at 11 P.M., and they’re in tears, concerned for their family, that’s heartbreaking,” Chapman tells Rolling Stone. “We’re doing this because we don’t have a choice. If we don’t come together as a community and fight, no one’s going to do it for us.”

West Lake Landfill is an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Superfund site that’s home to some of the oldest radioactive wastes in the world. A six-foot chain-link fence surrounds the perimeter, plastered with bright yellow hazard signs that warn of the dangers within. On one corner stands a rusty gas pump. About 1,200 feet south of the radioactive EPA site, the fire at Bridgeton Landfill spreads out like hot barbeque coals. No one knows for sure what happens when an underground inferno meets a pool of atomic waste, but residents aren’t eager to find out.

At a March 15th press conference, Peter Anderson – an economist who has studied landfills for over 20 years – raised the worst-case scenario of a “dirty bomb,” meaning a non-detonated, mass release of floating radioactive particles in metro St. Louis. “Now, to be clear, a dirty bomb is not nuclear fission, it’s not an atomic bomb, it’s not a weapon of mass destruction,” Anderson assured meeting attendants in Bridgeton’s Machinists Union Hall. “But the dispersal of that radioactive material in air that could reach – depending upon weather conditions – as far as 10 miles from the site could make it impossible to have economic activity continue.”

In a response offered to Rolling Stone, Republic Services says, “Mr. Anderson made his statement without any proof or evidence, and he ignored the fact that ongoing evaluation by MDNR, EPA and local authorities have confirmed that the increased heat at the Bridgeton Landfill has not impacted West Lake and does not pose a threat to the materials at West Lake.” Republic Services also denies that it is dealing with a “fire” – the company prefers the euphemism “subsurface smoldering event.” Under orders from the state, Republic is drilling holes to contain this “smoldering event.” Republic estimates it’s already spent over $20 million – about 0.25 percent of its 2012 revenues – on such mitigation efforts, “not because we have to, but because it is the right thing to do.”

When Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster sued Republic Services on March 27th, outlining a host of alleged odor pollution and public health violations at Bridgeton Landfill, he described the risk of the fire contacting the nearby radwaste as a mere “remote hypothetical.” But many residents are far from reassured.

The story of West Lake’s radioactive waste goes back to April 1942, when a St. Louis company called Mallinckrodt Chemical Works began purifying tens of thousands of tons of uranium for the University of Chicago as part of the Manhattan Project. Mallinckrodt’s workers did not receive adequate safety protections and had little knowledge of what they were dealing with – oversights that would lead to disproportionately high cancer death rates among workers, as documented in books, dissertations and journalistic accounts, including a groundbreaking seven-part series from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 1989. Over the next 25 years, the company’s uranium processing also created huge amounts of radioactive waste, much of which was secretly dumped at sites throughout the St. Louis metropolitan area, including West Lake.

Today, West Lake’s radioactive waste – all 143,000 cubic yards of it – sits on the outskirts of a former quarry with practically none of the standard safety features found in most municipal landfills. No clay liner blocks toxic leachate – or “garbage juice” – from seeping into area groundwater. No cap keeps toxic gas from dispersing into the air. This unprotected waste sits on a floodplain 1.5 miles away from the Missouri River. Eight miles downstream is a drinking water reservoir that serves 300,000 St. Louisans. Worst of all: The materials dumped in this populous metropolitan area will continue to pose a hazard for hundreds of thousands of years.

The EPA’s Region 7 is based in Lenexa, Kansas, about 250 miles west of St. Louis. The agency operates from a glass-paned office building that once housed the international headquarters of Applebee’s. In an empty conference room on the ground floor, Dan Gravatt, the EPA manager tasked with handling West Lake, looks every bit the government scientist in his blue work shirt, khaki pants and thin-framed glasses.

In 2008, the EPA decided to cap the radiotoxic material dumped at West Lake and leave it there. Capping the site meant piling five feet of dirt and rocks on top and implementing long-term monitoring for contamination. Facing widespread public pressure, including a letter from St. Louis mayor Francis Slay, the EPA postponed its decision pending further studies.

Gravatt has a smooth, rehearsed response to almost any question about the West Lake landfill – a skill he put to use at a community meeting on January 17th, when more than 300 concerned citizens gathered to hear the results of those EPA studies. One person in attendance was Kay Drey, an 80-year-old civil rights and anti-nuclear activist who’s been advocating for the removal of wastes from the St. Louis area for more than three decades. “I was very disappointed,” Drey tells RS. “The evidence is clear. This is radioactively hot stuff and it shouldn’t be in the floodplain by the Missouri river. And if they can’t admit to that – well, it’s incomprehensible.”

Back at his office, Gravatt insists that West Lake’s radioactive wastes only pose health risks for people who come in direct contact with the site, adding that the nuclear dump “doesn’t pose any current exposure pathways to area residents as it stands now.”

But Robert Criss, a geochemist at Washington University in St. Louis who has studied the issue closely, says the EPA is grossly underplaying a host of risks surrounding West Lake – flooding, earthquakes, liquefaction, groundwater leaching – that could pave the way for a public health crisis. That’s not to mention the recent development of an underground fire nearby. Says Criss, “There is no geological site I can think of that is more absurd to place such waste.”

Digging through old Nuclear Regulatory Commission studies, he recently stumbled upon what he describes as an error with major implications. For the last three decades, various government documents have referred to the waste at the landfill as “leached barium sulfate,” a nearly insoluble compound generated from uranium processing. But Criss says that the NRC’s own data shows the material dumped at West Lake contains far too little barium and sulfate to compose barium sulfate – by factors of 100 and 1000, respectively. “If I had this long to study something, I would be pretty embarrassed if this is what I came up with,” says Criss. “It is inconceivable for these people to promote remedies when they don’t even know what they’re dealing with.”

In a statement to Rolling Stone, the EPA disputed Criss’ findings, but declined to offer further explanation, instead deferring to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Upon request for a chemical analysis proving the waste is barium sulfate, the NRC sent RS the same 1982 report that Criss disputes.

So what happens now? The EPA officially lists four potentially responsible parties for the West Lake Superfund site. One is the U.S. Department of Energy. A second is Cotter Corporation, a company whose contractors secretly dumped nuclear waste at West Lake in the Seventies, as uncovered soon after by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The others are Bridgeton Landfill LLC and Rock Road Industries LLC – both subsidiaries of Republic Services, which currently runs the landfill. Under Superfund law, these four parties must ultimately foot the bill for any remedial actions ordered by the EPA; at the same time, it is these same four parties that contract and pay for all EPA studies leading up to a decision. This might seem like a conflict of interest, but Gravatt insists it’s all on the up and up: “We tell them what to do.” It must be a coincidence, then, that the EPA’s capping plan cost the potentially responsible parties only $41 million, compared to up to $415 million required to actually excavate the waste.

Missouri State Representative Keith English has another idea to fix the mess at West Lake. In February, English and 12 co-sponsors filed a resolution with the state assembly to transfer control of the site from the EPA to the Army Corps of Engineers’ Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Actions Program (FUSRAP) – a proven success that has already cleared more than one million cubic yards of atomic waste from other sites in the St. Louis area, shipping the radioactive contaminants to safe disposal cells in Utah and Idaho. A nearly identical resolution filed by State Senator Maria Chappelle-Nadal in Missouri’s other legislative body garnered three co-sponsors. “The educated people that deal with this type of waste can see that there’s an issue with just putting a cap on top,” says English.

Unfortunately, anything that passes through Missouri’s statehouses would only represent a symbolic victory. Since West Lake remains under federal jurisdiction, only an act of Congress could transfer the site to the Army Corps. For this reason, many are looking to Missouri’s U.S. Senate delegation – Democrat Claire McCaskill and Republican Roy Blunt – to lead on this issue. “I hope that our resolutions pass and get to Senator Blunt and Senator McCaskill’s office,” English says. “Because they’ve been sweeping it under the rug for the past several years.”

The Missouri Coalition for the Environment, which has advocated for the removal of West Lake wastes for more than a decade, in part blames Missouri’s ties to the nuclear energy industry for the senators’ lack of action. Both McCaskill and Blunt, as well as Missouri Governor Jay Nixon, have pushed for bringing more nuclear reactors to the state. Any more attention to a hazardous radioactive dump might get in the way of that messaging. “They won’t touch this with a 10-foot pole,” says the Coalition’s safe energy director, Ed Smith. “It doesn’t fit their narrative of clean nuclear power and ‘jobs, jobs, jobs.'”

Blunt has yet to make any public statement on the issue, and his office has not responded to requests for comment. McCaskill, meanwhile, supported the 2008 cap-and-leave plan for the West Lake radwaste; on March 12th of this year, she sent a response to several concerned citizens, assuring them, “I will continue to monitor these situations and ensure that any proposal put forward to address them provides a safe, cost-effective solution for Missourians.”

McCaskill’s reference to a “cost-effective solution” didn’t sit well with the activists in Bridgeton. “I don’t give a flying fuck how much it costs,” says Chapman. “This is about my children.”

Bridgeton’s underground fire was news to Ramona Herbert, who moved to Spanish Village with her family last November. She and her husband, Joshua, came here from St. Louis’ inner city, hoping for a safer place to raise their kids. When the Herberts signed a five-year lease for their new home, no one disclosed to them that hot nuclear dumps sit a mile north from their children’s bedrooms. No one told the Herberts that an ongoing landfill fire burns just down the street from their local Bob Evans restaurant. After two months in her new home, Ramona Herbert noticed an EPA flier on her door announcing a community meeting, but it meant little to her.

“My landlord said to me that we have a little sewage problem,” she recalls. “So I’m thinking the sewage system isn’t working right.” But the stench only got worse, and she started having trouble sleeping. Parents stopped letting 14-year-old Mateo Herbert’s friends shoot hoops in his neighborhood, because something in the air was making their kids’ eyes water. And Joshua Herbert, who boasted a nearly spotless medical history, started suffering terrible headaches.

Ramona Herbert learned about St. Louis’ nuclear waste legacy from a Rolling Stone reporter. As soon as she found out, she got in touch with Chapman, and she is now part of a growing coalition. Like hundreds of other concerned citizens in North St. Louis, she wants answers. “When were we going to be warned?” Herbert wonders, standing at the door of her new home. “When is it too late?”

Officers arrested 19 people at the city’s commercial dock after protesters were asked multiple times to leave the private property. Police then responded to a sand processing plant on Winona’s west end, where another 16 people were arrested, the Winona Daily News reported. Winona Catholic Workers organized the protest. Protesters say their goal was to halt business operations at each site.

“I think people see that the issue of silica sand is something affecting the entire region,” protester Molly Greening said. “They’ve come to stand in solidarity with this issue.”

Dan Nisbit, owner of CD Corp., which leases the commercial dock, says the protest created a distraction for workers and temporarily slowed operations at the facility.

“Obstructing business isn’t the right way to go about things,” Nisbit said.

Frack sand is used by oil and gas drilling companies. Opponents of frack sand mining have raised environmental concerns.

Monday’s protest was part of an annual celebration of the regional Catholic Worker community. Volunteers from Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin, Michigan and other states in the Midwest traveled to Winona to participate.

“As Catholic Workers living with the poor and marginalize, we come to this land to prevent the desecration of this land and the health of this community,” they wrote in a statement Sunday evening. “We declare Monday to be a moratorium of business as usual at the sites of production of silica sand to eliminate a necessary component of fracking.”

Catholic Workers and others in the Winona area have protested the industry for more than a year. They have blocked a rail loading terminal, demonstrated at the steps of the Winona City Hall prior to a city council meeting on frack sand regulations, and held other rallies.

During one rally at city hall in May 2012, a protester was cited for littering after he threw a handful of frack sand on the front steps.

Note: Dan Nisbit stated that “Obstructing business isn’t the right way to go about things,” yet he continues to ruin the environment and the safety of animals and humans including his own workers?! Hypocrite!!

Let Dan Nisbit know what you think of him and his environmentally destructive and human Silicosis and cancer-causing business:

This past Monday evening (on Mother Earth Day), NOFRAC launched the report, Out of Control: Nova Scotia’s experience with fracking for shale gas, in the community it happened back in 2007-2008. Kennetcook NS still has tailings ponds full of fracking waste, and many community members didn’t know the details of what had happened or even where the toxic waste ponds are.

Through research and documents received through a Freedom of Information request to the NS Government, the report uncovered a series of problems, including:

• Wastewater ponds built and filled without appropriate permits.
• A leaking wastewater pond but no soil testing done.
• A company determined to dispose of millions of litres of fracking wastewater underground, despite provincial refusals.
• Nova Scotia Environment (NSE) allowed discharge of 7 million litres of untreated fracking wastewater into the Windsor sewage treatment system, although an internal NSE document states that fracking wastewater (formation water) is typically too contaminated to be released into the environment without treatment.
• NSE gave approvals for disposal of fracking wastewater before they had information about the full range of contaminants in the wastewater, including radioactive elements.

Several concluding lessons learned are also outlined in the report and report summary, but include that the regulators are clearly behind industry in terms of an understanding of the industry and concerns with it, and health and environments effects may only appear over time.

The Council of Canadians has been involved with NOFRAC since its inception, and Matt Ramsden, Communications team member from our national office, did the layout for the report and supporting documents. The Atlantic office was on the sub-committee for this report, and the number of hours the other amazing sub-committee members put into the report needs to be recognized. Great job everyone!

Cleanup efforts are currently underway in four separate oil spills that have occurred in the last ten days.

On March 27th, a train carrying Canadian tar sands dilbit jumped the rails in rural Minnesota spilling an estimated 30,000 gallons of black gold onto the countryside.

Two days later a pipeline ruptured in the town of Mayflower, Arkansas, sending a river of Albertan tar sands crude gurgling down residential streets. And news is just breaking about a Shell oil spill that occurred the same day in Texas that dumped an estimated 700 barrels, including at least 60 barrels of oil into a waterway that leads to the Gulf of Mexico (stay tuned for more on that).

This week a Canadian Pacific freight train loaded with oil derailed, spilling its cargo over the Northwest Ontario countryside. Originally reported as a leak of 600 liters, the CBC reported on Thursday that the estimated volume of the spill has increased to 63,000 liters.

The accelerating expansion of Alberta’s tar sands has North America’s current pipeline infrastructure maxed out and, as a result, oil companies have been searching for an alternative way to move their product to market. As lobbying efforts around the stymied Keystone XL and Northern Gateway pipelines intensify, oil companies have been quietly loading their toxic cargo onto freight trains.

There has been a marked boost in the rail transport of crude in the last three years as new extraction techniques increase production in the tar sands. According to Reuters, “U.S. trains carried 233,800 carloads of crude oil in 2012, more than double the 65,800 carloads transported in 2011 and dwarfing the 29,600 in 2010, according to figures from the Association of American Railroads.”

Meanwhile the Canadian Pacific Railway’s crude oil volumes have skyrocketed from 2,800 carloads in 2010 to a staggering 53,000 last year. The company hopes to increase that number to over 70,000 this year.

Most, if not all, advocates of pipeline transportation will argue that the growing use of rail transport emphasizes the urgent need for pipelines. Pipelines are commonly touted as a more reliable mode of fuel transport than rail.

Pipelines, as the story goes, are safe.

Unfortunately for pipeline proponents, last week’s pipeline rupture in Arkansas is no anomaly in the history of US pipelines. In fact, pipelines have made a pretty consistent mess throughout the States for the last 20 years. One thing has changed, however: those messes are getting more expensive to clean up.

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Pipeline & Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) is responsible for reporting and recording all “significant pipeline incidents” which are all incidents exceeding the cost of $50,000 (in 1984 dollars).

In terms of property damage PHMSA records indicate that the 20-year average (1993-2012) cost of significant pipeline incidents is over 318 million dollars, the 10-year average (2003-2012) cost is over 494 million dollars the 5-year average (2008-2012) cost is over 545 million dollars and the 3-year average (2010-2012) cost is over 662 million dollars.

The cost of cleaning up after pipelines just keeps getting more expensive.

Over the last 20 years, pipeline incidents have caused over $6.3 billion in property damages. On average during this time period there were more than 250 pipeline incidents per year, without a single year where that number dropped below 220. During that time, more than 2.5 million barrels of hazardous liquids were spilled and little more than half of those spilled amounts were recovered in cleanup efforts.

One of the factors contributing to the cost of cleanup is the introduction of Alberta’s diluted bitumen to southern markets (The most expensive year on record is 2010 when Enbridge spilled 3.3 million liters or 877,000 gallons of dilbit into Michigan’s Kalamazoo River).

Companies eager to move Canadian dilbit south to refineries and export facilities have been jimmying an aging pipeline infrastructure to handle the more corrosive substance and there is currently no federal oversight to monitor this process.

ExxonMobil’s sixty-five-year-old Pegasus pipeline that ruptured last week was one such retrofitted line. Built in the late 1940s, the old winged horse of a pipeline was reversed in 2006 in order to carry Canadian dilbit to the Gulf Coast via Illinois at a 50 percent increased capacity. The burst line sent a river of at least 84,000 gallons of dilbit running down residential streets in Mayflower and into nearby wetlands.

The exact cause of the pipeline rupture is still unknown.

Many of the major pipeline operators – like Exxon, Enbridge and TransCanada – have been cited for lax inspections, shoddy emergency preparedness, and ineffective spill management and response. Both Exxon and Enbridge have been told their actions in the immediate hours after pipeline ruptures have made spills worse than necessary.

NPR reports “more than half of the nation’s pipelines were built before 1970. More than 2.5 million miles of pipelines run underground throughout the country.”

Debbie Hersman with the National Transportation Safety Board told NPR, “100 percent of the accidents that we’ve investigated were completely preventable.” In many cases companies performed inspections and discovered cracks and corrosion in the line but did not perform repairs before accidents occurred.

In an interview with Reuters, John Stephenson, vice president and portfolio manager at First Asset Investment Management in Toronto described these events as “not good for producers…not good for Canadian oil going south…not good for Keystone.”

But added, “the reality is this oil is going to make it south of the border, quite likely by rail or one of the other pipelines across the Canadian-US border, so I see it as a short-term hiccup at worst.”

Yet even a cursory glance at the history of pipeline accidents in the US shows what is happening in Arkansas is no ‘hiccup’ and will bear no ‘short-term’ consequences. At least, not for the residents of Mayflower.

I bring this information to the public with a very heavy heart. Some journalists revel in being able to expose the type of dramatic conspiracy contained in this article. I take no such pleasure in bringing this to your attention. I will receive no awards or accolades, nor do I seek any. I am setting myself up to be criticized as “one of those conspiracy theorists” with too much time on his hands who has nothing better to do with my time than to invent wild tales of corruption in an attempt to draw attention to myself. I will not be invited on Coast to Coast AM, to reveal my findings to an audience of 12 million people. Perhaps, 10-20 thousand people will actually take the time to read the stunning facts contained in the following paragraphs. What I am trying to accomplish is to start a chain reaction that will culminate in waking up a majority of the public in order to rise up against the abject evil that runs our country. This article is controversial, and I might not actually believe it myself except that every fact in this article is true.

This article is structured in such a way that if the reader takes the time to follow the evidence trail, there can only be one conclusion that makes any sense.

Specifically, this article will detail the following:

The globalists through their government minions are in the process of destroying massive bodies of water including, but not limited to Chesapeake Bay, the Great Lakes, the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico. The destruction is not because of neglect, it is willful destruction with very ulterior motives in mind.

The globalists are using nitrates from fertilizer and Corexit to accomplish their desire to create a dead zone in the aforementioned bodies of water.

The globalists are creating water dead zones which will allow the proliferation of algae growth and the oil companies have initially led the charge to convert our energy usage from oil to algae.

Prominent globalists are involved in this conspiracy and have contributed massive resources to this endeavor.

Prominent globalists are attempting to buy up as much water as possible to exacerbate the destruction of water resources in the aforementioned areas. In other words, Americans are looking at extreme water scarcity from which the globalists can wage wars and force submission to their will, while at the same time carry out their stated depopulation agenda.

My instincts tell me that this conspiracy has more breadth and depth than what is revealed here and it is my sincere hope that my fellow researchers will afford some much needed attention to these issues, because I strongly believe there is more to learn and we do not have much time because humanity’s fate hangs in the balance.

How many times in the history of the insurance industry, have individuals or businesses been caught setting fire to their homes and businesses in order to receive a lucrative payout of insurance money? This is exactly what BP and Exxon are doing. They are intentionally burning down their own home (oil) in order to construct a behemoth palace (bio-fuels).

From Parts Five and Six of this series, it was conclusively proven that BP, Goldman Sachs, Transocean and Halliburton prepositioned (e.g. BP stock dumping) themselves to make money from the destruction of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig. However, there is a lot more going on in the Gulf than a handful of corporations each making hundreds of millions of dollars from their contrived role in the oil spill. The motive to destroy the Gulf holds the promise of making certain entities and individuals multi-trillions of dollars.

The Obama administration and many others (individual billionaires, select politicians, BP, Exxon, Nalco, GM, GE, Goldman Sachs, University of Chicago, and many others including the Department of Defense) are all deeply invested in bio-fuels. These billionaire psychopaths will willingly sacrifice the Gulf and all of its residents for this multi Trillion Dollar industry representing a new era of energy applications.

Algae Will Replace Oil As the Nation’s Energy Source

Nitrogen fertilizers and Corexit are being used to systematically create dead zones in large bodies of water in the United States. The use of nitrogen fertilizers and Corexit are accomplishing the same result. This is no coincidence, as the tragedy in the Gulf was perpetrated to accomplish this end.

Farmers apply nitrogen fertilizer to crops to increase yield. Farmers are compensated by the government for crop yield. Therefore, farmers overload the soil. Plants absorb only 30 to 50% of the nitrogen, so as much as 70%, or 87 pounds per acre will end up running off into the nearest body of water. The only thing that grows in this environment is algae. Therefore, nitrogen has a decided evil side as it is creating huge problems with major bodies of water that we are only now beginning to understand. The EPA is aware of the problem, yet remains silent on the issue.

Chesapeake Bay is polluted beyond repair in which massive fish kills, general habitat degradation and bacteria proliferation threatens the health of humans. The damage is rampant. This massive pollution, resulting from the nitrogen runoffs resulting from agricultural endeavors, fills the Chesapeake Bay and, again, the only substance which flourishes in the bay is algae.

Each and every spring, excess fertilizer is deposited into the Mississippi River which eventually ends up in the Gulf of Mexico, thus causing a massive algae bloom that leads to a giant oxygen-deprived “dead zone” where fish can’t survive. And the same thing is going on in the Great Lakes in places like Lake Erie.

Following the Gulf oil spill, and against all common sense, the most lethal form of dispersant, Corexit, was used to treat the oil spill. Instead, what happened is that the spill has resulted in the creation of the second largest dead zone body of water in the world; second only to the Baltic Sea. And, as the reader will discover later in this article, the new energy craze among the so-called environmentalists is algae.

In isolation, we seem to only be looking at a pollution problem that the EPA should deal with. Simply put, the use of nitrogen fertilizer and Corexit should be banned. However, when we look at the totality of the Corexit/nitrogen problem being used to destroy our water supplies, one should immediately sit up and take notice.Once one understands that Algae proliferates in an otherwise dead zone of water, then one will understand why Corexit was used in the Gulf. And when one understands that fact, one can only conclude that Gulf oil spill was not an accident as it marks the ushering in of a new era in which the bio-fuel, algae, will replace oil. And, amazingly, the oil companies are among those who are behind this plot to destroy major bodies of water in order to allow for the propagation of algae.

President Obama is also participating in this conspiracy against humanity. On March 15, 2013, President Obama announced that it is his intention to move American vehicles away from oil to bio-fuels. Obama, amazingly in this period of Sequestration, has asked Congress for two billion dollars to expand research in this area. And isn’t it an interesting coincidence that the President’s science advisor,John Holdren, in 2009, advocated for “fertilizing” the oceans? I remember that most people thought Holdren had lost his mind when he proposed this as a solution for global warming. However, in the context of creating dead zones through the use of Corexit and nitrogen fertilizers, his suggestion makes a great deal of sense in light of today’s heightened interest in bio-fuels. This cannot be described as anything but psychopathic thinking in that the EPA would allow nitrogen fertilizers to destroy major bodies of water in which only algae can grow. And that this administration would even entertain the idea of creating oceanic dead zones through fertilizing these bodies of water is nothing but pure insanity. It is dangerous to the entire well-being of the planet. But of course, we are dealing with psychopaths.

How many brush fires equals an all-out forest fire? How many coincidences does it take to make a conspiracy? For those who think that there are some interesting thoughts presented here, but the conspiracy angle of destroying major bodies of water to foster the growth of algae needs more proof, let’s take a look at a variable which will connect all the dots.

Amazingly, the oil companies are attempting to lead the way in the process of converting our energy sources from oil to bio-fuels such as algae.

Burning Down Their Own Houses

I began to realize that many of our major bodies of water were being destroyed and all that was necessary to reverse the destruction was to halt the use of nitrogen fertilizers. Then I discovered that Corexit creates the same kind of dead zones just like nitrogen which also was unnecessary in its use because a less virulent dispersant could have been used in the Gulf. Did you know that Corexit is banned in 19 countries? It was at that moment that the light went on for me as I realized that we were witnessing the systematic destruction of major bodies of water on a grand scale. This was coupled with my discovery that the oil companies appear to be preparing to transition from oil to algae.

In August of 2009, BP entered into a partnership with Martek Biosciences to study the use of algae to convert sugar into biodiesel. Eight months later, BP’s and Transocean’s “negligence” led to the oil spill which gravely impacted the food chain, poisoned all life forms in the Gulf and dealt an eventual death blow to the Gulf by creating a massive series of dead zones where nothing will grow, except for algae, for generations to come.

BP is not alone with regard to a major oil company’s foray into the algae business. ExxonMobil entered into a partnership with Synthetic Genomics in order to develop energy’s next king, bio-fuels from algae. From this work, it was discovered that Corexit increases the bioaccumulation of petroleum hydrocarbons into golden-brown algae. For oil companies to be involved in algae conversion is the metaphorical equivalent of burning down your own house in order to collect the insurance money, and this is precisely what they did to the Gulf.

These facts certainly beg the question as to why BP and Exxon Mobil would be investing in a technology which would threaten their only viable product, namely oil?

Why Algae?

Algae has the potential to avoid most of the problems of conventional bio-fuels production, such as competition with food crops, and in principle can have dramatic effects on carbon dioxide emissions, even consuming emissions from sources such as coal-fired power plants.

The major problem with using algae as the next bio-fuel is that the fuel yields from algae are still too low for it to be a break-even proposition. However, if that problem were to be solved, algae would be king because it is such a low-maintenance substance. In a related and stunning development, Exxon has partnered with Craig Venter, the pioneer of DNA research. Venter has a stellar record of achievement in his work on the human genome. If anyone can solve the algae yield problem, Venter would the guy. However, if Venter cannot solve the problem of algae yield, OriginOil, Inc. is developing a novel technology which will transform algae into a source of renewable oil. Below is a depiction of the process.It Is Not a Conspiracy Until You Follow the Money

Readers need to keep in mind, that Exxon and BP began moving into the algae business several months prior to the Gulf oil spill and BP and its partners have been caught pre-positioning their stock moves to maximize profits and minimize losses IN ADVANCE of the oil spill event. And now they are leading the way to convert the nation from oil to algae energy use. These twin giant oil companies have had a lot of help in making this massive conversion a reality. George Soros is involved in “clean energy conversion” away from oil. Readers may recall from Part Six of this series proved that Soros financial interests were among the top five of financial institution which dumped BP stock a few short weeks before the oil spill, thus, making him a co-conspirator. And now Soros is heavily invested in Gulf algae farms as he has invested $1 billion dollars in the endeavor.

The US military invested $35 million dollars in algae jet fuel. Blackstone Group consulted with the Chesapeake Bay region energy provider Constellation Energy to sell company to Warren Buffet and his company Berkshire Hathaway. Buffet is majorly involved in bio-fuels and the algae laden Chesapeake Bay is prime hunting ground for this globalist. Al Gore is also involved in various algae projects as well. The same cast of characters keep rearing their ugly faces in their attempt to subjugate humanity while at the same time make a King’s ransom in the process.

Conclusion

T. Boone Pickens is well on his way to controlling the vast Ogallala Aquifer. Pat Stryker and Koch brothers are involved in garnering Colorado’s water resources in the beta test battleground for Agenda 21. Did you know that that it is illegal in Colorado to reuse irrigation water and to catch rain water? We should be asking ourselves why. Additionally, the Bush family controls the biggest water aquifer in South America. Meanwhile, the globalists are destroying vast amounts water resources in the United States. It seems that the globalists are hell-bent on creating water scarcity.

I do not believe that the globalists only motive is to destroy the Gulf and fresh water supplies so that their new biofuel craze can take hold. I think this is a byproduct to what the central planners are truly after, control over all water which will result in control over who lives and dies. This and more will be covered in the next installment of the Great Gulf Coast Holocaust.

Dave is an award winning psychology, statistics and research professor, a college basketball coach, a mental health counselor, a political activist and writer who has published dozens of editorials and articles in several publications such as Freedoms Phoenix, News With Views and The Arizona Republic.

The Common Sense Show features a wide variety of important topics that range from the loss of constitutional liberties, to the subsequent implementation of a police state under world governance, to exploring the limits of human potential. The primary purpose of The Common Sense Show is to provide Americans with the tools necessary to reclaim both our individual and national sovereignty.